CHAPTER 17
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CHARLOTTE:
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IN 1889, GEORGE WASHINGTON Vanderbilt II, the youngest child of William Henry Vanderbilt and Maria Louisa (née Kissam) Vanderbilt, began the construction of a 250-room mansion in Asheville, North Carolina, for a summer estate which he named Biltmore. Vanderbilt and his architect, Richard Morris Hunt, took for their model the Château de Blois and other châteaux of the Loire Valley, and then finished it with the icing of American baronial opulence.
“How do you think it compares to Biltmore?” Lucia asked when we arrived at the Château de Blois.
The château appeared spare from a distance and grew steadily and undeniably more grandiose on approach (564 rooms and 75 staircases, filled with ornately decorated floors and ceilings, tapestries, sculpture
